November 16, 2004

Business has gone through so many fads: TQM, push marketing,
viral marketing, CRM… now we’re all about customer centricity: if we can make
the customer central to the organization, well, that’s the key to success. Yes,
I confess that I’ve been on that bandwagon myself, so what I’m about to say may
shock you:

Stop focusing on the customer.

Stop focusing on your product.

Stop focusing on your sales techniques.

We all want to categorize everything. We want to put each
element of business into neat little boxes. Then we can point to one element and
say, “this is the key to all our
problems.” It’s just like fad diets: first, calories were the problem. Then,
fat was the problem. Now it’s carbs. Finally, consumers are starting to figure
out that it’s more complex than that; it’s more about balance. And just as
there is no fast fix for dieting, there’s no fast fix for business.

Right now we’re focusing so much on the customer that we’ve
lost sight of the big picture. When we focus on the customer, we see a person
out there – separate from “us” – that we need to identify, label and
categorize. Companies like Best Buy are segmenting groups and assigning names.
Sure, it’s resulting in sales. Yes, it’s better than trying to sell the wrong
product to the wrong person. It's a step in the right direction, but it's not the answer. It’s just part of yet another fad that won't deliver on everyone's expections,
and then we’ll all go rushing off to figure out the next piece of the puzzle to
fix.

And that is the fundamental problem: focusing on the puzzle
pieces and not the puzzle itself. We are artificially creating separation
between the company and customers – and between different departments within
the same company – when in fact we are all part of the same system. The
customer is simply a component of that system; no piece is more or less
important. It’s what I call the ecology of business. We need to switch our
focus from components to connections. A brand is an ecosystem. The strength of
the brand is directly proportional to the number and strength of the
connections within the system. Connections,
not components, are the brand drivers.

It starts with the ecosystem's foundation: the company and its
employees. We need to move beyond a focus on a specific department (silo
mentality) to a focus on the interconnections between individuals (system
mentality).What are the most critical
connections in your company? Why not have VPs over key connections
instead of components? What about giving more power and compensation to the
individuals who are directly responsible for customer connections? The individuals
working your store or call center are the puzzle pieces that connect directly
to your customers. They are equally as important as the CEO; perhaps more so.

And of course, how could we have a conversation about
connections without mentioning weblogs? I stumbled across this long but very
good post on the subject by Colin Henderson.
He quotes Ray Ozzie of Groove Networks: “Weblogs
can help us achieve a greater ‘return on connection’ from employee, customer,
and partner relationships.” So by extending the role of ‘connection creation’ deeper
into the company, the overall system is strengthened.

(UPDATE) Finally, we should consider the connection between the brand system and
the larger social ecosystem in which it operates. We could call it
"social responsibility" (component view) or simply see it as yet
another connection that must be monitored and strengthened. Common
values provide additional points of connection between all individuals
within and between systems. It's why companies like The Body Shop
have strong brands; they see themselves in context of the larger social
system, and the additional 'value connections' between individuals
serve as reinforcements. "A cord of 3 strands is not quickly broken."

I’m trying to figure out how to post a holistic system view
I developed using a visualization tool from TheBrain. It’s very cool… stay tuned.